Update on "Hermes as Smaug model" comment in previous post

UPDATE from the previous post:

I've just heard a comment directly from Hermes himself (via his handler) about the details leaked of his Smauginess...

Totally Smaug's eye...?

Hello!
can I please make a small correction to the above piece.
My handler said that del Toro had mentioned a description of Smaug once and it sounded similar to me, (but so do many dragons…) we know nothing more than the rest of the public do.
I’m simply a reference animal at digi, nothing more.
thanks for all the love and awesome pictures!

And here’s the link to the [del Toro] comment on GeekTyrant.com

Happy to come to the moot and meet though.

XX~
Hermes.

 So what have we learned?

1. Hermes was indeed a reference animal for Weta Digital
2. Guillermo del Toro had a specific design in mind for Smaug
3. His ideas sounded similar to what Hermes looks like, in some ways
4. Hermes can type, and has access to the internet

What does that all mean? Not all that much, I'm guessing. 

1. Hermes may have been one of many reference animals, physical or otherwise, for Smaug.
2. Guillermo del Toro is no longer involved with the design process, and I'm guessing the art direction has completely changed since he was at the helm.
3. Hermes reads our blog, and would like to visit the Welly-moot

Welly-moot's newest member, Hermes?

Hermes, we'd love to host you. Please bring your handler, Shirley! By the time our next meeting rolls around on July the 14th, the new Hobbit trailer will have been released (the day after tomorrow, in fact), so perhaps we'll have seen a glimpse of Smaug by then. We'd love to have Smaug as the main discussion!

What else have we learnt?

1. We have a theme for the next Welly-moot! :)

Thanks Hermes!

   - Jack

Welly-moot goes to the Weta Cave's 5th birthday party

The Weta Cave celebrated its 5th birthday this week - they first opened their doors to the public at 11:00am, on the 6th of June, 2008. As it happened, Alex and I were the first two through the doors on the day (ok, she was first, but I was holding the doors open for her).

Daniel Reeve

We weren't as quick off the mark today, five years (and two days) later. We arrived at the Weta Cave just around 1:30pm, halfway through an enormous queue for Weta's calligrapher/cartographer Daniel Reeve, who was selling his new Hobbit Birthday Party Invitations, and handwriting people's names onto them with his calligraphy skills. I had brought my map of The Shire (after taking it off my wall), and he signed it for me. Oddly, since his work covers a lot of my mancave's wall, I didn't have his autograph yet!

Mark Hadlow (aka Dori, and Bert)

While we were waiting, we spotted Dwarf actor Mark Hadlow elsewhere in the mass of people, and Chief Wizard Richard Taylor as well.

Alex with Jed Brophy (aka Nori) and an enormous smile on her face

The call went up that there was another Dwarf on the premises, and sure enough, Jed Brophy had arrived also.

 

Alex, still smiling, with Tania Rodger

After Daniel Reeve graciously signed my (his?) map, we went outside, and met up with Tania Rodger, Weta Workshop manager (and partner of Richard Taylor).

Various other people, including Warren Beatton and Dave Tremont came by to join in the celebrations, cake was eaten, and balloons added to the happy occasion.

Mad scientist and Welly-mooter, Warren.

Richard Taylor with Alex, and her autographed Hobbit book

Dave Tremont, Doctor Who fan #1, and creator of the miniature Barad-Dur

One interesting tale came to hand - in the morning a very special guest had been introduced to the crowds - Hermes the Blue Tongue Skink.

I was initially unclear about why he'd been invited (apart from being pretty awesome), but his handler/owner, Shirley Jones, mentioned offhand that he had been a digital model for Smaug when Guillermo Del Toro was still directing. I couldn't draw her out on more detail, so I'm not sure if Smaug still looks like Hermes, or how much, but that was an interesting snippet of information!?!

 I'm pretty sure this will be discussed at the next meeting - quite a few Welly-mooters had made their way to the event as well. I saw Annabel, Warren, Erin, Cinnamon, Elliot, and Ryan and Hawk. Did I miss anyone?

As an unrelated side-note, Alex and I are on our way to Japan next week, we'll be back for the next meeting (July 14th). Hope to see you all there! I'll be available via email sporadically if anyone needs me (but please don't need me).


  - Jack

Welly-moot goes to Armageddon!

Armageddon is in full swing.

That sounded wrong. I don't mean the end of the world is nigh - Armageddon is Wellington's annual fantasy convention. This year, it was held at the Westpac Stadium (where some of the Lord Of The Rings' sound effects were recorded, back in 1999).

I'd spoken about the event to Annabel Graham, the jeweller who has created our gorgeous badges for us (see right-hand side-bar, here on our blog). Annabel had offered a bit of wall space from her Whovian Jewellery stand for our banner, and I had two days off between LOTR-touring to help her out a bit, so I decided to take her up on her offer.

The event started today (Saturday), so on Friday we came to set up the stand.

The Welly-moot banner was still on bamboo sticks from the last event, which I thought might help hold it up, but in the morning it had fallen over. Luckily I'd brought some tacks in with me, which solved the problem completely.

Pic: At 8:30am, the queues had already started; the show wouldn't open until 10:00am!

I spent a fun (if tiring) Saturday with Annabel, discussing rather a lot of Doctor Who with rather a lot of Doctor Who fans.

I didn't take photos of all the Doctor Who fans, but here's a few special visitors for the Welly-moot. Pay special attention to the last two photos! :)

Pic: Welly-mooters Erin & Erika were the first to say hello, and promptly bought their Welly-moot badges

Pic: Welly-mooter Wayne soon appeared as well, in appropriate attire.

Pic: Welly-mooter Cinnamon came to say Hello as well. Apparently Ash was there as well but I arrived too late with my camera.

Pic: Oh, and did I mention Radagast the Brown? Radagast the Brown also came by.

Pic : Although what possible appeal a Doctor Who Jewellery store would hold for Sylvester McCoy is beyond me. ;)

All in all, a fun day, and we got to meet some awesome people. Apart from the obvious, we also ran into "our" Riventroll sculptor Kim Beaton who was doing live sculpting demonstrations with the newly named concrete "Pal Tiya", and Weta effects wizard Gino Acevedo. If you are in Wellington for the next two days, make your way to the Westpac Stadium - over the next few days there will be a lot more Hobbit actors around!

  - Jack

Welly-moot Pins

The Welly-moot badge is available!

As you can see to the right of this (and every) post, we now have the Welly-moot pins available for sale, directly through this blog (if you're reading this through Facebook, Google+, RSS, or any other way, and you don't see the links, please come to the blog itself on www.welly-moot.com).

pic: This is the bronze pin.

The standard Bronze pin is 25mm wide, and will set you back $22 (including p/p), or if you want it in Sterling Silver, that's $52 (including p/p).

If you're ordering from overseas, add an extra $8.50 for international shipping, by adding the shipping amount to your shopping cart.


All amounts are in New Zealand Dollars, and will be converted automatically by your bank (though they may charge you a small fee, I guess). Let me know if there's any problems!


The payments go directly to the artist Annabel Graham (who designed it for us), with a small amount coming back to the group as well, to (not actually) cover our expenses.

If you're not yet a member of our little group, you can still buy the badge - we think it's too cool not to share!


So wear your Welly-moot pin with pride! I expect to see a few at the next meeting!

Welly-moot 2.2 (April 28th, 2013) - Dual Themes

We had our second meeting this year, on Sunday, 28th of April. All the regular members attended: Jack, Alex, Kris, Martin, Ash, Cinnamon, Ben, Iain, Ryan and Jennifer with Hawk, Annabel, Kumi, and one new visitor; Kate from Germany.


We started with Jack opening the moot. He mentioned two projects; Mt Tolkien (the renaming of the mountain in South Island) and Riventroll (a statue in Rivendell (Kaitoke Regional Park)). Unfortunately the naming of Mt Tolkien was not successful at this time. However, we will continue to try to rename a New Zealand feature officially – we might be able to do some local renaming (perhaps formalise Rivendell). We will keep everyone informed. Regarding the Troll statue, we have applied for the Art Grant from Creative Wellington NZ for Riventroll’s funding. We are still waiting for the contract from them in the end of May. Fingers crossed!

Some updates from the members; Cinnamon showed us the photo of herself with a large group of the Hobbit’s cast, including Sylvester McCoy (Radagast), Stephen Hunter (Bombur), Dean O’Gorman (Fili), from this year’s Supanova in Brisbane, Australia.

Welly-moot member and jeweller Annabel has finished creating a gorgeous badge for our group. The introductory price for members at the meeting was $16, and it will shortly be available on our website for $20 (not including P&P). An announcement for that will be made soon.

Another great piece of news is that local LOTR touring company Wellington Rover Tours has granted us a special discount of 50% off for Lord of the Ring Full-day Tours for Welly-moot members. At this stage the discount will go all winter, so book in over the next few months. Send Jack a message and he can arrange the tour at the special price.

So, come and join our Welly-moot meetings, and enjoy this VERY special deal! Ben will be the first of our members to enjoy this, as he's booked in later this week. Hopefully we can get him to write a quick update about it afterwards.

Some other news:

• Tolkien’s new book will be published in May 2013 (The Fall of Arthur).
• Armageddon in Wellington on 1 - 3 June 2013. Annabel will have a stand, and we may be able to get representation there as well. More news as it comes to hand.
• Kim’s Dragon is at Shelly Bay at this moment if you want to see it.
• Two members of the Chilean Tolkien Society are coming to Wellington, and will take Jack’s tour with Ben. This report will post soon! (their site in "Google English" via Google Translate)

Kate mentioned that a German Sword Trainer is coming to Auckland in May. She suggested if we have enough people we can have the workshop in Wellington as well. However it was too short notice and we didn’t have enough time or resources to prepare for this. Hopefully in the future we may have another opportunity like this.

The Themes:

Finally, it was time for our discussions. The main topics were “What is your favourite part in Hobbit book?” and “Tolkien’s other tales and short stories”. To allow for a more active discussion, we divided the groups into two smaller circles and we had exciting, and fun discussions, with appropriately high geek-levels.

Theme 1 – What is your favourite part in The Hobbit?

A lot of people liked the moment where the Dwarves come Bilbo’s place, because it is so funny. Alex likes Gandalf and Bilbo’s first encounter – Gandalf said “What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that…..”. It is a very “unexpected” reply, and from this conversation onwards, unexpected incidents happen continuously to Bilbo, which is one of the main elements.

Part of the group - Martyn on the left, Cinamon and Ash at the top. (that's Kate's arm to the right, and Kris's head at the bottom)

Kris read the part of the book with her nice low tone to make people concentrate even harder. Even young Hawk was completely drawn in...

Theme 2 -Tolkien’s other tales and short stories

In addition to his mythopoeic compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. (Wikipedia) – Alex did her home work

• The Father Christmas Letters - annual christmas letters from Father Christmas for his children
• Mr. Bliss
• Roverandom
• Smith of Wootton Major ( Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major, like The Hobbit, borrowed ideas from his legendarium)
• Leaf by Niggle (part of Tree and Leaf)
• On Fairy-Stories (part of Tree and Leaf)
• The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
• Farmer Giles of Ham

Kris recommends “Roverandom”; it is easy, shorter, and fun. We agreed that the stories have fairytales, giants, wizards, dog which talks, magic, etc, and it is not only children but adults can enjoy these stories. Other opinions are that adults tend to analyse the stories but children don’t and they just accept them and enjoy them. Why shall we not enjoy them rather than analysing or criticising? Overall it was fun discussion and we will do it again.

Ben, Ryan and Jack debated whether the shorter stories could be interpreted as being fairytales told within Middle-earth by its own denizens – potentially a post “war-of-the-Ring” Middle-earth, long after the elves are all but forgotten. Certainly Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major could be read as such, while Leaf By Niggle is more of a “meta” work, a story that perhaps describes how the other stories came about.

Ben on the left, then Ryan & Hawk, Jenifer, Annabel, and Jack at the bottom (wearing the Finnish Tolkien Society's t-shirt)

An interesting point arose when sympathy was expressed for both Tolkien as well as for Peter Jackson, who have both described originally as creating their works for themselves, but have later also both said that the can’t read/watch them again (references?). Iain suggested that this echoed Frodo’s predicament in saving the shire, but finding himself unable to stay there afterwards. Interesting.

Welly-moot this year

We are based in Wellington NZ and so, will most likely have great opportunities to get involved locally especially next a couple of years because of the Hobbit 2 & 3.

• Welly-moot will be actively looking to join any event and hopefully won’t miss any opportunities! Because of that, we want to organise Welly-moot parties in December 2013 and 2014.
• Movie marathon – LOTR 1, 2, 3 and Hobbit 1 at Embassy Theatre before Hobbit 2 would be great idea. Jack will look into this in before the next meeting.
• We will invite people from in film industry in Wellington to our meetings.

As Jack was too busy talking to others, the meeting was closed by Kris and Alex. The next meeting will be on Sunday 14 July 2:00pm. We usually have meeting every two months, however this June, Jack and Alex are going to Japan, where they might be able to visit Tolkien Society in Japan! Expect a report if this ends up happening!

We will keep everyone informed on this website when any activities we will do. All posts here are automatically placed on our Facebook page as well as on our Twitter account.


  - Alex

Chilean Tolkien Society visits Wellington

A little while ago I received a message from two representatives of the Tolkien Society in Chile, Paula Menz and Rodrigo Krebs. They are currently travelling around New Zealand, and would be in Wellington on the day of the moot last week. Unfortunately, they wouldn't arrive in Wellington until after the meeting had finished, so that was a no-go.

Then I found out that they had also booked in for a full day LOTR tour around the region, so I decided to take an extra day at work, and show them around instead. Our own Ben was also booked on that day, so it seemed like a great opportunity to have a few hardcore Tolkien fans on board, all together.

It ended up being a fun day (as most of my days are). We started the tour on Mount Victoria, for the famous "Get Off The Road" scenes, including a Shortcut to Mushrooms. After that, we headed straight off to the Weta Workshop, as we were booked in to the new "Window Into The Workshop" exhibition that Weta has now formally opened to the public. We got lucky - there were trolls about outside, as well.

Bert (or Tom or William)

After the workshop, it was time for an early lunch at the Scorch-o-rama, and then straight on to the Kaitoke Regional Park, north of Upper Hutt, for a good look around Rivendell. More locations on the way back, including the beautiful Isengard in Upper Hutt's Harcourt Park, and that took it to well after 5:00pm.

I decided to drop off the other passengers first at their respective hotels, and then us four remaining hardcore geeks went off to continue the Tolkien discussions over dinner at one of my favourite local noodlebars.


We dropped Ben off at his residence, and eventually Paula and Rodrigo as well.

Ben, Jack, Paula & Rodrigo

 
Paula and Rodrigo, it was great to meet you both - we're sorry you couldn't make it to the meeting but there's always a next time! I've added your Tolkien group to our official page of Friends.

If you find yourself back in Wellington for any reason, we'd love to hear from you again!


  - Jack

Welly-moot 2.2 (April 28, 2013) - Dual Themes!

Due to the increased size in the group, this month we're going to try discussing two separate themes. The size of the group and the venue means it's becoming harder to hear everyone properly. To adjust, we're splitting the group into two separate themes, and you can pick (and switch!) at any stage of the meeting.

Theme 1) Your favourite part of The Hobbit
Theme 2) Tolkien's other tales

For theme 1, bring along your copy of The Hobbit book, and feel free to read a small section of it to the group, and explain why you enjoyed that part more than others.

For theme 2, we will talk about some of Tolkien's other tales, not set in Middle-earth. Farmer Giles, Roverandom, Leaf by Niggle, or any of the others - what makes them special? Do they relate to Middle-earth at all? Do they share common themes? Let's talk!


Also, we hope to have Annabel Graham with us again. Annabel is a jeweller who creates beautiful pieces for Doctor Who fans the world over, and she's hand-crafted a bronze badge for us. She showed us a sample at the last moot, which was adored by all.

The Welly-moot badge - get one now!

As promised, we've managed to keep the price very low compared to her usual pieces - it will be less than $20 (a final price will be set before the meeting).

So please, bring a $20 note, and wear the Welly-moot logo with pride.


We'll see you next week - bring friends, family, or perfect strangers! And please, spread this announcement on your facebook pages, twitter account, work noticeboards, etc.

  - Jack